The Stardust of Yesterday
by Kohaku Minamoto
Summary: "You ask too many questions." "You don't give very good answers."  Arthur learns that making Brendan Frye disappear is not enough to leave the past behind. Inception and Brick crossover.  No OCs.
1. Chapter 1

_Shut your eyes _  
_There are bluer skies _  
_for your embrace to my heart_

He's not quite like Cobb yet – he can still dream on his own. But his dreams are only hollow shells of what dreams are supposed to be, and for that, he is grateful. In the past (the past he would rather not think about), he has woken up one too many times with his heart racing and his cheeks wet with unconscious tears. Now, he wakes with only a faint sense of bittersweet wistfulness that rarely lingers.

He doesn't miss the dreams, hazy and indistinct as they are. He locks them away carefully and tries to forget about them.

But even he slips up, now and then. He's a trained professional and mistakes are not really supposed to be in his vocabulary, but behind the sharp suits and the calm eyes he is still very much human. Like everyone else, he has memories that he would rather forget, and despite the carefully constructed walls he has erected around those recollections, his subconscious manages to worm through the cracks.

It happens infrequently enough that only a handful of people have ever seen her, and even fewer have actually _noticed_ her. Right now, the latter group numbers three – he counts Mal even though he'll never see her again – and none of them knows the truth. The _whole_ truth, anyway.

That group unintentionally gains a fourth member during the Fischer job. While Cobb goes globetrotting to assemble the rest of their team, he's left with a wide-eyed university student to train. Arthur doesn't resent the job – far from it, actually. Ariadne is every teacher's dream – inquisitive, intelligent, and eager to learn. She absorbs every piece of information he gives her at a rate that is almost alarming, presents astounding results to him, then demands _more_.

The fact that she is quite pretty doesn't hurt either.

Even though he should be used to her prolific abilities by now, Arthur still finds himself surprised. By her vision, her creativity, and – even more than everything else about her – her perception.

The last trait is one that works well in dream architecture (the level of detail that she provides continues to amaze him) but it's not something that he enjoys when it is turned on him. He notes that she is a lot like Cobb in that respect, but unlike Cobb, who tempers his perception with a certain level of tact and professionalism, Ariadne is constantly pushing the envelope. She asks probing questions that he doesn't want to answer, goes places where he doesn't want her to go – and it's not because she's _nosy_, per say (though the sarcastic part of his mind calls her that, among other uncharitable things, sometimes). It's because she's incurably _curious_.

Arthur has to give her credit. She notices after only three shared dreams – one where he is the dreamer, two where she is – and calls him out on it.

"Who's that?" she queries casually. They're walking down a busy sidewalk with enormous buildings looming all around them – influenced by NYC, he notes absently, and wonders what the city means to her – and he is more interested in the architecture than in the projections of his subconscious that pass them.

"Pardon?" Arthur replies, bringing his gaze back down to look at her. Ariadne raises one dark brow at his inattention.

"Who's that?" she repeats, this time accompanying the question with a jerk of the head. Arthur follows her gaze to a figure across the street…and has to fight to stay calm. Even so, a few projections look abruptly at him and Ariadne. He doesn't slow his stride, keeping his face carefully blank – it wouldn't do to draw their attention. His projections have always been more touchy than most.

"Nobody," he says smoothly, his voice even. Ariadne hurries to keep pace with his longer strides.

"Don't give me that," she says, frowning. "She was in the last dream where you were in the subject, and she wouldn't stop following us then. She's following us now too."

Arthur doesn't have to look to know that across the street, the girl is tailing them, the chill wind lifting her soft blonde hair and rustling through the folds of her long skirt. More projections are taking notice of them now; one of them deliberately slams his shoulder into Ariadne's, sending her stumbling into Arthur. He steadies her, leaning closer to whisper in her ear.

"She's _nobody_. She is only following us because you have drawn my subconscious's attention, and by pointing her out, you've alerted the other projections. Keep it up and you'll be attacked in no time."

To his chagrin, Ariadne doesn't give the subject up. She rubs her shoulder and furrows her brow. "But she's been following us since the dream began," she says. "And she's not looking at me the way everyone else is. She's looking at _you_."

A passing projection grabs her arm in a vice-like grip; Arthur pushes him off with a warning scowl. "_Stop_," he says forcefully to Ariadne, then freezes as he hears the voice from across the street.

"Brendan!"

Ariadne turns. "Brendan?" she asks, seemingly unaware that now every single projection's eyes are on her. "Who's – "

She doesn't get to finish her sentence before three projections leap forward and wrestle her to the ground. This is all his subconscious needs – other projections rush to gather around, their yells almost drowning out Ariadne's cries. "Arthur, _Arthur_!" she screams. "Arthur, help me!"

A flash of a knife and the screaming stops. Arthur almost doesn't even notice. As the dream crumbles around him, he turns slowly – almost against his will – to look across the street, at the one projection that did not rush forward to attack Ariadne. She smiles at him, a sad little smile that does not quite reach her eyes.

Her mouth moves again, and she's too far away for him to hear, but he can still hear her voice in his memories, untainted by time's passage. "Brendan."

His lips part. "Emily."

Then the earth cracks beneath his feet and he falls gratefully into oblivion.

* * *

"What the _hell_ was that?"

Arthur stares unseeingly at the cracks in the warehouse ceiling. He doesn't answer Ariadne right away, though he can hear the girl's anger in her voice. Slowly, he removes the IV from his arm and sits up, massaging his wrist.

There's a shriek of metal as Ariadne gets up from her own chair and marches over to his, footsteps loud in the silence. She wobbles a little bit, still suffering from the aftereffects of the dream, but her voice doesn't waver. "Arthur," she says, when he doesn't respond. "What was that?"

He doesn't meet her gaze and reaches one hand into his pocket. "You drew my subconscious's attention and the projections attacked," he answers matter-of-factly. His fingers close around the loaded die and he breathes a light sigh. Back to reality, then.

"You know that's not what I mean."

"The dream itself was quite good, though," he continues blandly, not addressing her outburst. "Did you base some of it off of New York City?"

"Arthur!" He looks at her now, and she looks almost as angry as she was the first time she encountered Mal in Cobb's mind. "What _happened_?" she demands. "I've been in your mind before, and your subconscious didn't attack me that time."

"That's because you didn't attract – "

"I _know_!" Her voice echoes alarmingly in the little room. "I know," she repeats, this time more quietly. "But this is the first time I've seen anyone's subconscious attack so fast."

"You haven't been in very many dreams," he observes drily, "so that's not much of an observation."

She frowns at him. "When I was in Cobb's mind," she says, "I flipped buildings and twisted physics, but the projections didn't actually attack until Cobb realized I had recreated a real place in his mind. Then they were on me so fast that Cobb couldn't fight them off. When we were in my mind, you showed me all sorts of impossible things, but the projections didn't attack until time was almost up."

"Your subconscious is not nearly as aggressive as mine," Arthur explains, hiding his disbelief at her perceptiveness, "because you have not been trained." He holds up a hand to stop her protest. "Don't try to use Cobb to refute that. Even though we have both been trained, we are still very different people, and that reflects in our subconscious."

"I've seen your subconscious before now, though," Ariadne says. "And the projections didn't leap on me nearly as fast then as they did today."

Arthur opens his mouth to voice some sort of excuse, but nothing comes out. She's eyeing him shrewdly, coming to some conclusion.

"Cobb's projections jumped me," she says slowly, "because I brought back some place that was important to him. When he noticed it, the emotional response brought the projections – brought _Mal_ – running. You didn't respond to the place or anything, but when I pointed out the girl, your subconscious freaked out and s-stabbed me."

Her voice catches a little on the word, and Arthur glances at her face. He had expected this – Mal was the first projection that ever killed her in a dream, and she did it in the most brutal and visceral way possible: she stabbed Ariadne. Because he knows this, his subconscious knows it, and the projections applied that knowledge to their attack. _They wanted to cause her as much pain and distress as possible_, he observes clinically, but does not voice this to Ariadne. It wouldn't do for her to know how much the dream had affected him.

"So who is she?" Ariadne presses, still shaken but resolute nevertheless.

"It's not important," he says wearily.

"It _is_. If she's appearing in your mind the way Mal appears in Cobb's – "

"Our situations," he interrupts, voice harsher than he intends it to be, "are nothing alike. Mal interferes whenever Cobb is in the dream, whether he is the dreamer, the subject, or just a bystander. The projection in my mind – " because he refuses to call her by name " – only appears when I am the subject. She's harmless."

"It didn't seem that way to me."

"Let me amend that." Arthur doesn't mean to snap, but the surprised look on Ariadne's face leads him to soften his tone somewhat. "She _herself_ is harmless. She usually doesn't even speak. The only reason she did this time is because you acknowledged her, and that was what brought all the projections down on you."

Ariadne doesn't respond for a long moment. She's looking intently at his face, seemingly searching for something. Her gaze is more than a bit unsettling, but he doesn't break eye contact, staring back in calm silence. His heartrate is returning to normal, the dream fading from his mind. But he can see it in the tight line of her lips, the furrow in her brow – Ariadne's not going to let this one go so easily.

"Who is she?"

"A girl I once knew," he says shortly, and rises from his seat. His tone clearly says that this conversation is over, but Ariadne follows him anyway as he cleans up the PASIV. He can't say he's surprised.

"You must not have seen her in a long time," she observes. "She looked like she was still in high school."

"Eighteen," he says, shutting the silver case a little more forcefully than he means to. "We went to school together."

"She called you Brendan," she muses, and he feels his shoulders stiffen at the name. "Why?"

"You ask too many questions," he says, evading the question.

"You don't give very good answers," she shoots back, and he smiles a little in spite of himself. "Okay, fine, keep your secrets," she continues, "but tell me one thing. Why's this girl so important that she keeps showing up your subconscious?"

The smile disappears from his lips. "She's…someone I can't forget," he says after a silent moment, choosing his words carefully.

"Why not?"

He straightens, keeping his back to Ariadne. "You ask too many questions," he repeats, "and I don't feel like giving you the answers to them."

"I – "

"The next time you're in my mind, don't acknowledge her. Don't even look at her. She'll follow us, but she won't hurt you. But if you provoke her like you did today, that'll bring the projections down on you for sure. And unless you want to be stabbed again, I suggest that you avoid that."

He feels like a jerk for reminding her of how she died, but he suppresses the guilt and tells himself that the fewer people know, the better. He doesn't need others running around with the secrets of his subconscious.

"Go home," he says, turning to face her. "We're through for today."

She looks at him in surprise. "But – "

Arthur gives her a pointed look and she shuts her mouth. "Nice job on the architecture," he says, "but make it less obviously New York next time. Otherwise you'll make the subject suspicious."

"O-Okay. Are we still meeting tomorrow?"

"Yes. I'll find you after your classes are finished."

She doesn't ask how he'll do that – it's his job to know everything about everyone, after all. "Bye, then," she says hesitantly, and takes a few steps towards the door before stopping. "Arthur…"

"Yes?"

"Are you sure she won't interfere? I mean, we've already seen what kind of damage Mal can do – "

He takes a deep breath. "She won't," he says quietly, with conviction. "I promise."

Ariadne gives him one last, searching look, then leaves. He sinks down into a chair, suddenly feeling very drained, and cradles his head in his hands.

_That's four, now,_ he thinks, and sighs. _ Shit._

* * *

_A/N: Beginning lyrics are from "If You Can't Sleep" by She & Him. Story title is from "Stardust" by Hoagy Carmichael, performed by Nat King Cole._

_A crossover of the movies "Brick" and "Inception." This happened mostly because I'm on a bit of a Joseph Gordon-Levitt streak right now. My favorite roles are the ones where he actually smiles - which is why I like "(500) Days of Summer" - but he plays the tortured soul so well, nevertheless. And Brendan Frye seems like he could grow up to be Arthur, given a push in the right direction._

_An understanding of "Brick" is not necessarily required to understand this, but it may help - otherwise you'll be sort of lost. It will be explained in future chapters, so expect spoilers._

_"Inception" belongs to Christopher Nolan, "Brick" to Rian Johnson. Check out both movies - they're awesome. And, as my friend says, you can never have too much Joseph Gordon-Levitt. :)_


	2. Chapter 2

Ariadne doesn't quite look at him the same after that incident. There's always a curious sort of focus in her gaze when she watches him, and she doesn't bother to disguise it. He knows she's still trying to figure out what went on in that dream, but he's not about to open up and spill everything to her. He trusts her with constructing dreamscapes, but not with much else.

It's not that he doesn't like her – he does. She's an intelligent, friendly girl, and there are moments where she makes him laugh without meaning to. But he's definitely not looking to become friends. They're business associates, nothing more; if this job goes off without a hitch, he will probably never see her again. The less she knows about him at this point, the better.

"I'll be the dreamer this time," he says when she looks expectantly towards the PASIV case. "You seem to have gotten the basics down pretty well – I want to show you some more complicated things."

"More paradoxes?" she asks wryly, following him to sit in one of the chairs. He gives her a thin smile.

"You got it."

"Does this have anything to do with yesterday?" she asks him, and he's taken aback by the straightforwardness of her question.

"Yes," he replies, and they don't speak as they hook themselves up and sink into his dream.

* * *

_He only stuck around long enough after the incident to get his high school diploma. He didn't even go to graduation – it was a pointless ceremony, and there was no one on that field worth bidding farewell to. He was never much good at goodbyes, anyway._

_All his mother got was a note, carefully perched on the kitchen counter, and Brendan was out the door. He only brought a duffel bag that contained a few changes of clothes – where he was going, he wouldn't need anything else._

_His ride wasn't there yet, but someone else was. A skinny blond boy with huge glasses, sitting on the curb and toying with a Rubik's cube. He looked up at the sound of Brendan's footsteps._

"_Going somewhere?" his voice was light, conversational. Brendan shrugged, shifting the duffel to his other hand._

"_Yeah."_

"_Not college, huh?"_

"_Nah. Not interested."_

"_Got a job offer somewhere else?"_

"_Something like that, yeah." He didn't go into detail, and Brain didn't push for it. That was the thing he liked about Brain – he knew when to back off and mind his own business. Maybe if Brendan were more interested in building relationships, he and Brain could have been friends. As it was, he was almost sorry that he wouldn't see Brain again. They had worked well together._

_Brain's hands stilled, a completed Rubik's cube nestled between his fingers. He stood, pushing his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose and squinting in the light of the midday sun. "Got a ride?"_

"_He's late, but yeah."_

"_That might be him." Brain pointed at a dilapidated old Honda that had just rounded the corner at the end of the street. Brendan squinted in that direction. He nodded._

"_Probably."_

"_Well, I won't keep you then." Brain hesitated for a moment, then stuck out his right hand. Brendan clasped it in his own and pumped it once before letting go. Brain offered him a lopsided half-smile. "Take care of yourself, Brendan."_

"_You too, Brain."_

_The boy directed an ironic salute at him and wandered off down the street. Brendan turned his gaze to the Honda, which pulled up beside him. The man in the driver's seat leaned over to unlock the door for him._

"_You're late," Brendan informed him matter-of-factly, climbing into the passenger seat. The other man huffed._

"_I had some other business to take care of." He glanced curiously at Brain's retreating figure as he pulled out onto the street. "Was that a friend of yours?"_

_Brendan shrugged one shoulder. "Something like that." He cleared his throat and changed the topic before the driver could ask for clarification. "What kind of business was so important that you had to be late?"_

_Dominic Cobb rolled his eyes. "I was setting up the deal for your new identification papers. You said you wanted to disappear, correct?"_

"_Yes."_

"_I found someone who can do it. Excellent forgeries, but his spelling is a nightmare. I had to write everything out for him to make sure it would be correct."_

_He glanced at Brendan. "You're sure you want to be someone else? You don't have to leave your life behind, you know. We're working in dream security, not in covert operations. It's not something you need to change your name for."_

"_I know." Brendan turned to look out the window. "But there's nothing here for me, and I don't want anyone trying to follow me."_

_Cobb seemed a little bit skeptical. "Brendan – "_

"_Arthur," he corrected the other man, not looking at him. "If I'm going to disappear, I may as well start now."_

_His tone warned against further argument, and Cobb settled into his seat with a slightly exasperated sigh. Arthur allowed his eyes to drift closed._

_He had chosen his new name randomly from a book of baby names that his mother owned, not because it was personally significant to him. It didn't totally escape him, however, that the Brain's real name was Arthur._

* * *

Cobb returns with not one, but two more men to add to their team. He first introduces the heavyset, bearded man as Yusuf, their chemist. Then – only for Ariadne's benefit – he introduces Eames.

"Pleasure to meet you," Eames says smilingly to Ariadne, and Arthur rolls his eyes because Eames only ever acts this charming when there are women involved. He has to hide a grin when Ariadne responds to Eames with an upwards jerk of the chin, the favored greeting of teenage louts everywhere in America.

"'Sup," she says casually, and Arthur has to laugh at the look on Eames's face.

"You sure know how to pick 'em," Eames mutters to Cobb, who doesn't bother to contain his amusement.

"Eames, this is Ariadne," he says. "Our new architect."

"Well, she's a damn sight better-looking than your last one, I'll give you that." Eames shoves his hands in his pockets and gives Ariadne a quick once-over. "Whatever happened to that slimy git, anyway?"

"Last I saw, Nash was being hauled off by Saito's men," Cobb says.

"Saito had him _killed_?"

"No – he just left him to our former employers."

"Well, can't say I'll miss him," Eames says without remorse. Ariadne tilts her head questioningly.

"Where _is_ Saito, anyway?"

"Back in Japan," Cobb replies. "He has some business to take care of before he joins us. He'll be here in a few days. In the meantime, let's see what you've been working on."

"Sure," Ariadne says, and Arthur moves to retrieve the PASIV. "But can you explain to me what a forger is, first?"

Cobb looks to Eames, who grins widely. "Better yet, let me _show_ you," he says to Ariadne, waggling his eyebrows in a way that is both suggestive and hilarious. Ariadne gives him a slightly sardonic look and settles into a chair far away from him.

"Fine. It'd be good for him to see some of what you're working on anyway. Then…" Cobb pauses in the middle of removing his jacket. "Arthur – "

He knows what Cobb's going to ask him. If Eames is going to be forging within Ariadne's dream, then Cobb will have to be the subject, and that is something that Cobb has been avoiding as of late. Arthur knows it's because of Mal, and normally he would consent to being the subject, but after the incident with Ariadne, he doesn't want to do it. Besides, Eames will be there, and as ridiculous as the forger sometimes (often) is, he is also infallibly perceptive. Arthur imagines what Eames would say if he noticed Emily, and suppresses a shudder.

"No."

Cobb raises his eyebrows. "No?"

"No." He gives Cobb a pointed look, and the other man subsides.

"Fine, then. Yusuf, if you don't mind…"

Arthur breaths a small sigh of relief, glad for once that Cobb knows. He sets the PASIV down on the table and hands needles to each of them before sitting down in the chair beside Ariadne. The girl looks at him.

"Is this about – "

"Maybe," he says evasively. "Focus on your task. I'm not going to take responsibility if you do badly."

He hides a smile as Ariadne rolls her eyes. "I don't need you to," she says, and sticks the needle into her arm with perhaps more force than is necessary. "I'll do perfectly fine on my own."

And she does. Of course.

* * *

_The first time he saw Emily in a dream, he freaked. There really was no other word for it. The projections had descended on Cobb within seconds, trampling him in a veritable mob while Arthur just stared across the street, unable to believe what he was seeing. "E-Emily?" he whispered._

_She took one step off the sidewalk. "Brendan."_

_Then he'd woken up, and Cobb was standing over him, breathing hard. "I don't know what that was," the older man said harshly, "but I expect you to explain yourself."_

_He stared up at Cobb, expression carefully blank. "What do you mean?"_

"_No one's subconscious is ever that violent unless something goes wrong," Cobb told him. "We weren't even a minute in before you knew you were dreaming. I saw the way you looked at that girl. Who is she?"_

"_No one," he lied, and Cobb's scowl grew darker._

"_I'm not going to train you if I think I'm going to be ambushed every time we go into a dream together."_

_Arthur ran a hand over his face. "It's not like that."_

"_Convince me, then."_

_He took a deep, shuddering breath. "Her name is Emily," came out in a rush. "We knew each other in high school. She…she was my girlfriend."_

"_Was?"_

"_We broke up." He glanced at Cobb to see the other man's eyebrows raised, and Arthur frowned at the implication. "She didn't show up because of that," he snapped, irritated that Cobb had attributed his problems to something as mundane as "girl troubles." "She's dead."_

_Cobb didn't seem overly surprised by this. "That makes more sense," he muttered. "How did she die?"_

"_Shot. Misunderstanding over a drug deal." He oversimplified the story, partly because it was too convoluted to go into in detail, mostly because he didn't want to reveal so much of himself to a man that he had only known for just less than a month. "Look," he said, when Cobb didn't speak, "I had no idea she would show up in a dream. I promise, it won't interfere with the job."_

_Cobb squinted at him. "How?"_

_Arthur had no explanation ready. How was he supposed to remove the projection of Emily from his subconscious, short of completely wiping out his memories? "I don't know," he said, "but I'll find a way."_

_He was surprised when Cobb huffed a short sigh. "I'll give you one week," the man said. "If we're still having problems by the end of that time, I'll leave and you will never see me again."_

"_Deal," Arthur breathed, almost unable to believe his luck. "A-Are we still going into the dream then?"_

_Cobb grunted an affirmative. "That's the only way to figure out what's going on," he said, "and to find a solution."_

_The next dream was a complete disaster, as was the one after. Cobb finally got sick of being trampled, stabbed, and shot to death. "I can't be the dreamer," he bit out sharply, almost ripping the needle out of his arm. "You're going to have to go in by yourself."_

_Arthur stared at him. "What?"_

"_Your subconscious is the most hostile thing I've ever seen. If I'm there, you'll never be able to figure out what the problem is, because your subconscious keeps attacking me. So go in without me. Talk to your own subconscious. Figure out what's going on."_

"_What – right now?"_

"_There's no time like the present," Cobb said grimly, and pressed the button._

* * *

Emily never intrudes on his natural dreams, withered husks that they are. Once in a while – very rarely, these days – he'll dream vividly, in blinding color and breathtaking sound. And then it's _her_ voice that resonates throughout. She sounds like a singer in a piano bar, her voice smooth and soft, occasionally dipping to husky, smokier tones.

"I mean to rule the earth, as he the sky – we really know our worth, the sun and I!"

He wakes with the phantom taste of whiskey on his tongue, laced with something sweeter and infinitely more dangerous. Arthur lays awake, staring at the ceiling, and allows himself to remember lying on another bed, tears drying on his cheeks and a soft warmth pressed against his side.

He wonders idly what Laura is doing now, where she is. It's not because he cares – he doesn't – but he sometimes thinks about what it might be like to meet her now, years after they last saw each other. She never came back to school after their final confrontation, and he'd never expected her to. Laura Dannon was too smart to stay behind after he'd pulled.

Instead, she had disappeared. He barely spares her a thought these days – it's only in those still hours of morning, when the sky outside is still dark, that his mind turns to what might have been.

When it comes to her, he doesn't regret anything. She said that she loved him, but he doesn't believe her. She was dangerous, even in high school, playing even the most powerful people in the burgh – he couldn't trust anything that came out of her mouth. He suspects that she is still a player, though now her pawns are probably powerful businessmen, not drug dealers and high school meatheads. It would not surprise him in the least.

* * *

_A/N: __This seemed like a good place to end, even if I didn't follow up on the thing about talking to his own subconscious._

_I'm bringing Brendan's past into it slowly and everything else isn't exactly moving fast either, but I promise, it will get faster by next chapter. I mean, this would be kind of a boring story if I just kept grinding along at this pace._

_Fun fact: The actor that plays the Pin in "Brick" also plays Nash in "Inception."_


End file.
